Performance effects of partitioning

[Buckchop]

I am about to reload XP Pro, and I need help figuring out what is the best way to partition my drives from the get-go. I feel a little bit lost, because I haven't found much research on this stuff. But maybe I'm just being over-cautious.

Reading some stuff in the work-in-progress FAQ answered a couple questions, but brought up many more questions.

To start with, here's the specs on my system:

Processor: P4C Northwood 2.4GHz, 512KB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB, overclocked to 3.4GHz
Motherboard: ASUS P4P800 Deluxe, onboard VIA Raid controller
Memory: 1GB (2x512MB) Kingston HyperX PC3500, dual channel, latencies: 2.5-3-3-7
HDD's: 2 Western Digital 80GB, 8MB cache, 7200RPM (160GB total)
Video Card: BFG 6800GT 256MB OC
Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS
Power Supply: Antec 430 Watt TruePower
Case: FoxConn/Allied Super Case Black midtower (Now sold by Apex, modded for fans)
Cooling: Thermaltake P4 Spark 7 Xaser CPU heatsink/fan, 4 Antec 80mm case fans (2 intake, 2 exhuast), Adaptec PCI exhaust fan (Average temperature ranges between 30 C [idle] and 40 C [Doom 3] for both CPU and board)

Help me make sense of this here. In this article, it states that if you have one partition, (specifically one seperate drive) for your OS and page file, you can increase performance. Am I reading that right? So if I set aside a 5GB partition (C), only for XP Pro and a paging file, will that be the best performance?

Next question:
If I have only XP on that one partition, with all of my apps and games on another partition (D), and if I have to wipe out and reinstall XP on C:, will all my games and apps on D: still run just fine? Will there be any issues with the system registry?

I use up very little disk space compared to most people (maybe 20GB at most so far), so I need to decide if I'll do Raid 0 or Raid 1. That's still up in the air. The little bit of performance would be nice, and I don't have any crucial data on here. At the same time, if there won't be much of an increase in performance, it might be nice to have the peace of mind.

That said, what would you people recommend for partitioning?

My initial thoughts:
Raid 0 (160GB total), or Raid 1(80GB total)
5 to 10GB on C: (system, paging file)
30 to 35GB on D: (games, apps)
The remainder on E: (video, music, pictures, other saved files)

I need to have the ability to reload the OS partition at any time, because I end up messing things up tweaking and shit.

Forgive my ramblings. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks ya'll.

 

[milling_hordesman]

well, i suggest you do that 5GB partition for the system. i do it myself (though i've never seen it advertised before). i'm not certain if there are any performance benefits, but one thing i can tell you is that it keeps your data safer. that is, if you OS gets corrupted, say from installing SP2 before it's all worked out and you need to do a reinstall, all of your app data should be safe on the D: partition.

now, yes, there will be registry issues. you'll basically have to either 1) reinstall over the old directory or 2) move any data you want to save out of the old directory and delete the directory, reinstalling in a fresh directory. some games (doom 3, for example) do _not_ need to be reinstalled to run properly after a reformat (though you might lose your settings), but other games (Age of Empires 2) _do_ need to be reinstalled after a reformat.

one thing to make certain of: do not use the default "My Documents" folder, because it'll get formatted with the operating system. make a new folder on drive D: that you use for your documents, etc. also, make sure that (if you're intentionally reformatting) your games don't have save files in your My Documents folder. Some games like Dungeon Siege and Need For Speed: Underground keep their save files in a subdirectory of the Application Data folder, so you need to move it before formatting if you want to keep it.

EDIT: here's my setup:

HDD1 (Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM)
-------10GB C: (Win XP)
------- something < 110GB E: (Apps)

HDD2 (WD 200GB 7200 RPM SATA)
------- something < 200GB D: (Archives)

the Win XP is my operating system drive, the Apps is my applications/games drive, and the Archives is my music/movies/data/drivers, etc drive. the < signs are there to indicate approximations, rounded for inexact HDD sizes.

You really only need 5GB for your operating system. i chose 10GB because i was overcompensating for my previous partition, which was only 2.5GB large (ran into space issues with unzipping large files, installing large programs, etc). it had initially been 5GB which was fine, but i ran a little experiment with Linux and ended up losing 2.5GB into some irrecoverable void that i never managed to recover them from.

 

[Buckchop]

I ended up doing Raid 0, just because I've noticed a slight decrease in loading times and a noticable decrease when copying large files for backups.

I did a 10GB partition for C:, just so I'd have the ability of having a maximum 4GB page file (like I'd ever need it, it just gives me a psychological security), as well as copying large files onto the desktop and such.

C: System 10GB
D: Apps and Games 40GB
E: Archives 100GB (10GB lost in overhead for a total of 160GB)

I appreciate the advice. The stuff I have in D: are apps like Office XP, Photoshop, Winamp, Sandra, Alcohol 120, and then Doom 3 (because that's the only thing I've been doing for a while now : ).

If Doom 3 doesn't need to be reinstalled, what about Office and Photoshop? Those are easily reinstalled if it needs to happen, so it's no biggie. Thanks again.